MUDAM's artist in residence talks about upcoming events

US artist, author and musician Georgio "The Dove" Valentino takes over the weekly Wednesdays@MUDAM happy-hour events in July, inviting audiences to "suspend their expectations" and discover his band's out of the ordinary style.

30.06.2014

(AnB) US artist, author and musician Georgio "The Dove" Valentino takes over the weekly Wednesdays@MUDAM happy-hour events in July, inviting audiences to "suspend their expectations" and discover his band's out of the ordinary style.

The artist and his live band, La Société des Mélancoliques, are performing on July 2, 9 and 16 to present their newly completed pop chef-d'oeuvre “Mille Plateaux”, named after a work of post-structuralist theory.

Meant as an “institutional critique”, the album's genre encompasses everything from soundtrack and Krautrock to country-and-western, surf, lo-fi and high-concept avant-garde. To everyone who finds that a little hard to imagine, the musician explained to wort.lu/en that “it's best if they just suspend their expectations entirely” and let the music do its magic.

With a drummer, a bassist, an occasional violinist and Valentino himself as singer and guitarist, “we can be a very convincing rock group,” he said.

More than being an album by a few band members, however, "Mille Plateaux" is a collaboration by artists from all over the world, 17 in total. Over the course of July, six of those will stop by at MUDAM, including minimalist jazz trio Ο Γιωργος Jesús Παπανικολοπουλος, described as “a sleazy-listening Dutch post-folk ensemble” by Valentino.

Together, they will host a spoken word event on July 17, which focuses on the work of an unknown Italian singer and poet, Piero Ciampi.

Ciampi's “Geistbuch” (ghostbook) is “perfectly suited” to Valentino himself, the artist said, explaining that he can identify with the Italian poet's “relationship to his art, to his trade, to his audience, to his peers and finally to posterity.”

Despite his, what he calls his “over-the-top, Prohibition-era gangster nom-de-guerre”, Valentino describes himself as an honest-to-god American, who has lived all over the world, for instance in Florida, Detroit and Brussels. His life as a vagrant means that he lives life without a safety net, and he emphasises that the more he sees of the world “the more it fascinates, disgusts and thereby inspires me.”

Wednesdays@MUDAM are free and take place from 6pm to 8.30pm. The spoken word event, also free of charge, is organised on July 17 from 7pm to 8pm. The month comes to an end with DJ Gilles Le Guen, on July 30 at MUDAM café.